[Ry]

I can try to track that info down, but manufacturers aren't to keen on saying a "competitor" makes part of their phone.

Samsung, LG, Sharp, and Sony are who I can think of off the top of my head that manufacture displays. There are other smaller companies, too.

Sent from my Inspire 4G using Tapatalk 2

No worries, was just curious. Awesome if you could. I notice on teardowns (iFixIt), the don't really talk about the displays - but they'll list out who makes the other components.

[jeffreii]

I tend to try and stay away from demanding that my next phone have the best technology available. I thought "ok, if the Galaxy S3 ends up with a 720p Pentile display, as long as it looks great I'm fine with not having an RGB matrix."

HOWEVER: having played with the HTC One X's 720p SLCD2 RBG display this weekend...wow was I blown away. It was just gorgeous. (Of course the 16GB storage (~10GB available) kills it for me.)

I really don't think I can be satisfied with the Galaxy S3 having a 720P pentile display now...how can that even compete with what the HTC One X has to offer? I'm scrambling to think of backup plans like getting the EVO 4G LTE (have to switch to Sprint...) or important an international One X with 32GB...

Waiting 2 more days to decide.

[Kevin O'Quinn]

I tend to try and stay away from demanding that my next phone have the best technology available. I thought "ok, if the Galaxy S3 ends up with a 720p Pentile display, as long as it looks great I'm fine with not having an RGB matrix."

HOWEVER: having played with the HTC One X's 720p SLCD2 RBG display this weekend...wow was I blown away. It was just gorgeous. (Of course the 16GB storage (~10GB available) kills it for me.)

I really don't think I can be satisfied with the Galaxy S3 having a 720P pentile display now...how can that even compete with what the HTC One X has to offer? I'm scrambling to think of backup plans like getting the EVO 4G LTE (have to switch to Sprint...) or important an international One X with 32GB...

Waiting 2 more days to decide.

And I'm doubtful that you'll have the brightness that the One X has, too.

[DaRkL3AD3R]

And I'm doubtful that you'll have the brightness that the One X has, too.

SAMOLED will never produce as much brightness as a Super LCD, nor will a Super LCD ever reach the deep dark blacks that SAMOLED can have. It's part of the trade off.

Once we get Super AMOLED Plus HD displays, it'll be AMOLED all the way, but until the day when Pentile finally bites the dust, I'd personally avoid AMOLED like the plague.

<=== P/O'd ex Galaxy Nexus customer.

[NateBoii]

Ive been using amoled since my first android phone a few yrs ago (samsung moment)
til now on my og epic 4G. I definately wouldnt mind using a slcd2 display, atleast until sammy switches the pentile rgbg to rgb. But who knows that may never happen. If not i probably most definately will try slcd2.

[jean15paul]

I've learned a lot about LCD and amoled, pentile and RGB from this post. But I have another question. I've seen IPS and IPS+ come up recently. What's an IPS display?

Edit: I don't know if this should have been a seperate post. It deviates from the title of the post, but it still on the topic of display tech.

[Kevin O'Quinn]

The breakdown of IPS can be found HERE.

IPS+ improves overall brightness level, and probably some other areas, too.

It's generally accepted that IPS LCD's are the top shelf technology for LCD's, but eyes on with SLCD2 displays like the one used in the One X say that it's superior, but nobody is saying exactly what technology is behind it's awesomeness. If it's a refinement of SLCD then it's not IPS, but performs similarly if not better. The other possibility is that improvements have been made to IPS that aren't being shared yet, but like I said we don't know for sure.

[bigkid666999]

Display quality cannot be determined in an unbiased way. While the aforementioned parameters can be measured and compared objectively, their impact on and importance to a given user cannot.
I, for example, got my HTC One X because it had the best large display and camera on the market. To get these features, I was willing to put up with a non-removable battery and limited non-expandable storage. Other users may have different priorities.

Sent from my HTC One X using Tapatalk 2

[Kevin O'Quinn]

Display quality cannot be determined in an unbiased way. While the aforementioned parameters can be measured and compared objectively, their impact on and importance to a given user cannot.
I, for example, got my HTC One X because it had the best large display and camera on the market. To get these features, I was willing to put up with a non-removable battery and limited non-expandable storage. Other users may have different priorities.

Sent from my HTC One X using Tapatalk 2

Display quality can absolutely be determined in an unbiased way. There are standards for white point, color accuracy, measurements for brightness and black levels, viewing angles can be measured.

These are all qualitative measurements that can be compared side by side and be considered apples to apples.

What you may be talking about is trading other features for a better display. You said you traded a non-removable battery and non-expandable storage for the display and camera that you wanted. Those two features are important to you (happen to be the same top two features I look for, too). But neither of those has anything to do with SAMOLED vs LCD. By choosing the SLCD2 on the One X you accepted some trade-offs (black level) for a much better overall display.

FWIW in all side by side comparisons I've seen the SLCD2 display trumps the SAMOLED HD in everything except black level. Also, LCD will never be as good in this area, it's just a fact of the technology.

[icebike]

Display quality can absolutely be determined in an unbiased way. There are standards for white point, color accuracy, measurements for brightness and black levels, viewing angles can be measured.

These are all qualitative measurements that can be compared side by side and be considered apples to apples.

What you may be talking about is trading other features for a better display. You said you traded a non-removable battery and non-expandable storage for the display and camera that you wanted. Those two features are important to you (happen to be the same top two features I look for, too). But neither of those has anything to do with SAMOLED vs LCD. By choosing the SLCD2 on the One X you accepted some trade-offs (black level) for a much better overall display.

FWIW in all side by side comparisons I've seen the SLCD2 display trumps the SAMOLED HD in everything except black level. Also, LCD will never be as good in this area, it's just a fact of the technology.

Well said.

Your black is never going to be totally black. Get over it, it's not that big of a deal. Any one saying black level really matters on a cell phone is just someone looking for an excuse to hate on the phone.

Brightness on the other hand, translates to outdoor usability. It's critical.

Sent from my HOX

[jroc]

Well said.

Your black is never going to be totally black. Get over it, it's not that big of a deal. Any one saying black level really matters on a cell phone is just someone looking for an excuse to hate on the phone.

Brightness on the other hand, translates to outdoor usability. It's critical.

Sent from my HOX

As one who has seen Netflix on an LCD and Amoled screen at the same time...its not an excuse to hate....

Its called preference. Movies look better....to me.....on my RAZR because of the blacks and colors. Some want the blacker blacks, some want the sharper screen res. Some want more accurate colors, some want over saturated colors.

At the end of the day...preference is gonna outweigh everything else.

My Rezound is whiter and brighter vs. my RAZR. My RAZR has better outdoor viewing and better viewing angles tho...

Its has to be more than brightness for better outdoor viewing. My Rezound is like a mirror...making it alot harder to see outdoors vs my RAZR.

[Kevin O'Quinn]

SAMOLED's trick is optically bonding the display to the outer glass, and other tricks in the matrix of the panel to reduce glare. So yes, brightness isn't everything for outdoor viewing, but it's the easiest to achieve, and then just imagine SAMOLED with the same brightness as, say, the One X or iPhone 4S. It would rule in outdoor viewing. The reason Samsung had to go to such "extreme" engineering measures to make it that viewable outdoors is because of it's lack of ability to get bright enough for direct sunlight viewing.

And yes, personal preference has a lot to do with which display a person will like and choose, but that won't change the fact that they might like a display that is technically inaccurate and inferior to a different display.

To expand on black levels a bit, they do matter. If you have too high of a black level then dark grays and blues will basically look like black. This is because the display can't go black enough to differentiate between them. The OG EVO was like this. Newer LCD's are a lot better in this area, and certain panels in tv's are actually only worse when you measure it (looking at you Sharp Elite), but in regular viewing you have to try hard to see the difference.

[SeanPlunk]

Awesome post! I wrote a about this on a blog my friend and I mess around with a couple weeks ago.

I am not a fan of pentile matrix screens!

[Note2Lover]

A very informative post Kevin!! Thanks

Here's a question:
How does the Note 2's SAMOLED display with RGB matrix stack up against the SLCD2 display using the RGB matrix arrangement?
I know the SLCD2 is still better; but by how much?

Also, since the Note 2 has an HD SAMOLED display implementing the RGB matrix arrangement, technically that means it is HD SAMOLED+, or is it?

[Kevin O'Quinn]

A very informative post Kevin!! Thanks

Here's a question:
How does the Note 2's SAMOLED display with RGB matrix stack up against the SLCD2 display using the RGB matrix arrangement?
I know the SLCD2 is still better; but by how much?

Also, since the Note 2 has an HD SAMOLED display implementing the RGB matrix arrangement, technically that means it is HD SAMOLED+, or is it?

I haven't personally seen them side by side, but the SLCD2 still has an advantage in outdoor visibility as it's noticeably brighter still. It'll also probalbly still have more accurate colors and whites, too, but the AMOLED will still rule in blacks.

Samsung probably skipped putting a "+" on the end due to the layout of the subpixels. They aren't equal size, and aren't all next to each other. Samsung still made the blue larger to account for the faster degradation. I imagine this will trickle down eventually, but the physical size is probably why they had to put this in the Note 2 and not the S3.

[Shadowriver]

My galaxy S2 after nearly a year of use starting to have burnouts... i didnt expected to see those so fast hopefully they will extend life time of OLED

AMOLED always will have better in blacks for natural reasons, LCD doesn't emit light by it self, it works like filter, it need backlight and on black LCD does not filter light compliantly, AMOLED emit light by itself and simply does not lit on black, every technology that emits light by it self always will have superior blacks to LCD.... or else LCD-like technologies will find way to avoid those light leaks thru black. But on other hand technologiesthat emit light have problem of burnouts as enery that they emit slowly killing it, LCD has that too but as it is backlight that do all the work it burning out in balance (usally) and whole screen loose brightness or change color which make you not notice a burning out

[icebike]

My galaxy S2 after nearly a year of use starting to have burnouts... i didnt expected to see those so fast hopefully they will extend life time of OLED

AMOLED always will have better in blacks for natural reasons, LCD doesn't emit light by it self, it works like filter, it need backlight and on black LCD does not filter light compliantly, AMOLED emit light by itself and simply does not lit on black, every technology that emits light by it self always will have superior blacks to LCD.... or else LCD-like technologies will find way to avoid those light leaks thru black. But on other hand technologiesthat emit light have problem of burnouts as enery that they emit slowly killing it, LCD has that too but as it is backlight that do all the work it burning out in balance (usally) and whole screen loose brightness or change color which make you not notice a burning out

After all of these posts, I'm not sure it is necessary to lecture us once again on how led vs lcd works.

Run this simple test :
Hand your HTC One to a S3 own who has not seen one before.

The first thing out of their mouth will be WOW.

The silly argument about blacker blacks just doesn't matter in the real world.

Sent from my HTC One X using Tapatalk 2

[Blair1068]

great writeup!

[jean15paul]

After all of these posts, I'm not sure it is necessary to lecture us once again on how led vs lcd works.

Run this simple test :
Hand your HTC One to a S3 own who has not seen one before.

The first thing out of their mouth will be WOW.

The silly argument about blacker blacks just doesn't matter in the real world.

Sent from my HTC One X using Tapatalk 2

The blacker blacks do matter. It can be hard to distriguish true black from dark grey on LCD displays. This can be a big deal when (for example) watching a movie with very dark shadowy scenes. I'm sure there are other situations where it makes a difference, but this is where I've experienced it. That being said, I still prefer LCD over AMOLED.

[icebike]

We are talking about a cell phone here.
How important can the movie watching experience be?

Sent from my HTC One X using Tapatalk 2

[The Real X Dawg]

After all of these posts, I'm not sure it is necessary to lecture us once again on how led vs lcd works.

Run this simple test :
Hand your HTC One to a S3 own who has not seen one before.

The first thing out of their mouth will be WOW.

The silly argument about blacker blacks just doesn't matter in the real world.

Sent from my HTC One X using Tapatalk 2

Been through that before sure the One X screen is nice but it wasn't much of a wow factor for me.

In the real world it doesn't matter what's considered the "best", all that matters is what you like the best.


Sent from my Jelly Bean chomping Infuse 4G!

[Kevin O'Quinn]

The blacker blacks do matter. It can be hard to distriguish true black from dark grey on LCD displays. This can be a big deal when (for example) watching a movie with very dark shadowy scenes. I'm sure there are other situations where it makes a difference, but this is where I've experienced it. That being said, I still prefer LCD over AMOLED.

Yes but luckily the One X has a black level that's low enough to make this almost a non-issue.

But because of the lack of a proper white point (AMOLED won't display a TRUE white, ever), and the general lack of overall brightness those same shadows can get "squished" and lose any granularity they might've had.

There are a few reasons for this, and I think they've been discussed in this thread already. If not I apologize and would be more than willing to explain it again.

[jean15paul]

We are talking about a cell phone here.
How important can the movie watching experience be?

Sent from my HTC One X using Tapatalk 2

Apparently you don't know how many millions of people stream and download TV shows and movies to watch on their phones. These aren't just cell phones; these are media consumptions devices. The Netflix app has between 10 million and 50 million downloads. The vast majority of those are people watching TV and movies on the go on their phones, because Android tablets make up a small minority in the Android ecosystem, and there are much better ways to get Netflix to your TV then over a cell phone. And that's only one app...

You may not do it, but the movie and TV watching experience is very important to a lot of people.

[jean15paul]

FYI, Erica (from XDA TV) did a REALLY good video on the different display technologies, including pixel arrangement, color saturation, outdoor readability, ghosting, blue pixel burning, etc. It's a 15 minute video, but it's really good. I'd recommend it.



Edit: A lot of the info in the video has already been covered here, but it's definitely nice to see examples.

[prediscover]

New SuperLCD 3 technology has come out. Any differences?